I am finishing my preparations for Ironman Coeur d’Alene and while my physical workouts are getting shorter, my mental workouts are getting longer. With most of the hay in the barn on the physical side of the preparation it is time to put more focus on the mental preparation for the race. This is the method I use to prepare myself mentally for racing.

1) Set Goals: setting goals is the first step to achieving success. You must know what you want before you can get it. I don’t care what you have for goals; the important part is a goal. We are all at our best when we are constantly striving to achieve a goal. We all want different things out of our racing experience so define what is important to you and write down your goals for the race. If you don’t set a goal, you won’t know if you succeeded. Your goal may be as simple as finishing the race, but that in and of itself is more than most people can achieve and can be the difference between you giving up when things get tough, or sucking it up, grinding your teeth, and finishing the race. Written goals are achieved more often than unwritten goals. It is a subconscious reminder of what you want to get out of something.

2) Focus on the process: this is a hard aspect for many people to master. When we race we tend to get concerned about our place and how other people around us are performing. While racing others and being competitive is very important to successful racing, it takes the focus off what you are capable of doing. Set a race plan and strategy in place and then execute that strategy. The process aspects that are important to consider are how you feel, what your effort is, your technique, and your strategy. For example instead of just saying you want to swim 21 minutes for an Olympic distance event, you should say I want to focus on staying relaxed in the water, keeping my stroke rate constant and my breathing under control. These all have to do with the process not the outcome. While your goal of swimming 21 minutes is an outcome goal there are many variables that may affect this outcome from coming true, the course may be long, the water may be choppy, and there may be a current. All of these things can derail the outcome goal of 21 minutes, so it is better to focus on the process of the swim and have goals to draft off another swimmer, or breathe every 3 strokes. These are goals that focus on the process of swimming and focusing on the process is really all you have control of while racing. Set a plan, make a process goal to execute your plan, and then visualize that plan being executed.

3) Visualize: this is probably the single most important step in mental preparation. Your mind cannot tell the difference between what is vividly and repeatedly imagined in your mind and what your body has actually done. Winning and performing at your best is a habit and it is a habit you can create in your mind. I like to visualize at night before I go to bed, I find this is the best time to enter into a relaxed state and it often carries over into my dreams, further programming my subconscious mind about winning. I take 10-15 minutes each night while I lie in bed and close my eyes and picture myself racing. I prefer visualization in the first person where I am actually racing (as opposed to third person visualization where you watch yourself racing). I find first person visualization is more accurate to how your body will actually experience the race. I go through every part of my race in my mind. I can feel the temperature of the water and how my arms feel as they stroke through the water. I can feel my breathing and heart rate. I feel the wind in my face on the bike and feel myself turning the cranks smooth and powerful with a relaxed upper body. I feel myself running smooth and in control, relaxed in the jaw and upper body. I feel each foot strike on the pavement and use my trigger words to stay focused and in control. Most importantly I feel myself crossing the finish line, raising my arms in victory, and the feeling of complete and total success.

4) Create a cheat sheet for your plan: I like to take a small note card and write down small key reminders of my process goals (and sometimes a few outcome goals). I use this cheat sheet to create my trigger words for racing. Trigger words are words you repeat to yourself when you race to help you stay focused and strong. For example, you may have triggers words on the bike like: Smooth, powerful, or strong. You may also have a phrase that you repeat to yourself: “keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’” One of my favorite phrases from a Limp Bizkit song. I use my cheat sheet to help me visualize what I will say to myself while racing and how I will feel.

Here are my goals for my upcoming race in Coeur d’Alene:

1) front pack swim

2) draft and stay relaxed

3) follow the bubbles

4) focus on my turnover rate

5) seamless transition to the bike

6) ride in the correct power zone

7) conserve and stay in control

8) stay in my aerobars as much as possible

9) stay on top of my nutrition plan, reminders to consume what is necessary

10) seamless transition to run

11) keep the run under control for the first 10K, build on the second 10K, run with guts on the third 10K, Bring it home and finish strong on the last 10K.

12) lean forward and use gravity to help me run

13) turnover

14) WIN!

Here is what my cheat sheet for each segment looks like:

SWIM

Go out hard and in control

Settle into front pack

Follow the bubbles

Key word: Turnover

Bike

Keep HR under control and power in proper zone

Conserve matches

Drink, eat, and focus on food as much as possible

Key Word: Keep Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’

Run

Stay relaxed and in control

Smooth

Focus on cadence and leaning forward

Key word: Never gonna stop

Work Hard,

TJ

As an industrial engineer I learned a lot about manufacturing and how to manufacture thing efficiently and effectively. One of the keys to improved manufacturing is what we call level loading. Level loading basically means you want a constant stream of products coming onto the manufacturing line, flowing through the manufacturing line, and eventually coming off the manufacturing line. Now for proper level loading to work you need to start with the end result, which in manufacturing is your demand. Once you know your demand, you can calculate how many pieces you need to manufacture each day, hour, and minute. Once you have this figured out, you can start to level load the manufacturing. If I know that I sell 300 widgets a month (and I’ll use round numbers here) that means I need to make 10 widgets every day. Let’s say I have a manufacturing line that runs for 2 hours every day making widgets and the rest of the day is spent making sprockets or something else. If I have 10 widgets to make in 2 hours then I need to make 5 widgets in one hour, one widget every 12 minutes. This means that I must start a new widget every 12 minutes for the 2 hour manufacturing run of the widgets. If there are 6 steps to making a widget, then each of those six steps must be done within the 12 minutes. If it takes more or less than 12 minutes to complete a step you need to change the process of the steps. While it may take less than 12 minutes to complete a step, it cannot ever take more than 12 minutes or you will be behind at the end of the line. So level loading means you will have a new widget coming on the line every 12 minutes, and completed widget coming off the line every 12 minutes. Great so what does this have to do with my pacing on the bike?

When racing in a triathlon on the bike, even pacing is always the best strategy. I use an SRM powermeter to provide me the best data about my pacing when I ride. The SRM uses strain gauges in the crankset of the bike to measure torque and thus calculate power in terms of wattage. Just like manufacturing, the best way to get from A to B is to maintain a level load. This means keeping your wattage constant. While spikes in wattage are sometimes necessary in order to get up a big hill or ride into a strong wind, you have to keep the total number of spikes low and the wattage as constant as possible. To figure out your target wattage you have to start from the end, just like in manufacturing. The best way to figure out your threshold wattage and thus racing zones is to first get a proper bike threshold test from your coach, then second go out and ride a 40km Time Trial as steady as you can. If you don’t have a powermeter, you should buy one. It is the best pacing tool available on the bike. Let’s say you don’t have one and for some reason don’t want to buy one, then your next best option is using heart rate as a guide. Your coach can again get you a threshold test using your heart rate. The biggest problem with using your heart rate to pace is that your heart rate lags behing your effort. So your heart rate often rises too high after you already did too much work. So, back to the pacing. If you know your threshold power on the bike is 280 watts that means you should be able to hold 280 watts for about an hour, now you must also have a functional threshold test which is the 40km time trial to confirm that you actually can hold 280 watts for an hour otherwise you the numbers do you no good. If you can hold 280 watts for an hour then you want to try and race an Olympic Distance cycling leg at about 5-10% lower than 280 or 250-265 watts, maybe more if your training is going really well! The key to the pacing is not letting your spikes get out of control. You need to keep your power under 10% over your threshold of 320 watts. So if you are climbing a big hill, try to keep the power as constant and steady as possible. Try not to ride up the hill at higher than 320 watts and try not to ride down the hill at less than 230 watts. While it makes sense to put more effort into the climb, burning all your energy climbing so you have to coast the downhill doesn’t make much sense. That would be like having one manufacturing station that took 16 minutes to complete and another station right next to it that only took 2 minutes to complete (assuming the demand is 12 minutes per station as above). You would be overextending on the front end only to under perform on the very next station. If you average 400 watts on the climb and then coast the downhill you not only tire out your legs and inhibit your ability ride at your threshold, but you also jeopardize the remainder of your race.           Just like in manufacturing you need to know what your average time per station needs to be, and then you also need to know what your maximum and minimum time per station actually is. You have to ride the hill more conservatively and the downhill more aggressively. Keep the wattage constant and within your acceptable range in order the manufacture a bike split that is maximized for your ability level.

Work Hard,

TJ